A guide to the language of history
History glossary
Understand the people, places and ideas behind the stories. Find a term, read its meaning, then explore it in context.
1–27 of 27 terms · E
Clear filtersEast India Company
the chartered English trading company that grew from Asian commerce into territorial and military power in India.
Eastern Roman Empire
the eastern half of the Roman Empire, centered on Constantinople, which survived the fall of western imperial rule.
Edict of Milan
the 313 agreement granting legal toleration to Christianity in the Roman Empire.
edicts
royal inscriptions through which Ashoka communicated policy and moral instruction.
Einsatzgruppen
mobile Nazi killing units that carried out mass shootings behind German lines, especially in occupied eastern Europe.
Emancipation
the freeing of enslaved people or oppressed groups from legal control.
Emergency Committee
the group of Soviet hardliners who attempted the August 1991 coup.
Empire
a large political system in which one power rules many peoples or territories.
Empiricism
the idea that knowledge should be based on observation, evidence, and experience.
Enabling Act
the March 1933 law that let Hitler's cabinet pass laws without normal Reichstag approval.
enclosure
the consolidation and privatization of common or scattered farmland, often displacing rural people.
Enlightenment
an eighteenth-century intellectual movement emphasizing reason, reform, science, and criticism of inherited authority.
Epic of Gilgamesh
an ancient Mesopotamian poem about King Gilgamesh of Uruk, friendship, fame, death, and the search for meaning.
equal protection
the constitutional principle that government must provide people equal protection of the laws.
Estates-General
the representative assembly of France’s three estates called in 1789 amid fiscal and political crisis.
Etemenanki
the great ziggurat of Babylon dedicated to Marduk, possibly linked to later Tower of Babel traditions.
Eternal Public Peace
the 1495 ban on private feuding among members of the empire.
Ethnic cleansing
the forced removal of an ethnic or national group from a territory.
Eucharist
the Christian sacrament of consecrated bread and wine.
eunuch
a castrated male palace servant whose access to rulers could become a source of political influence.
Euphrates
one of Mesopotamia's two great rivers, flowing from modern Turkey through Syria and Iraq.
ExComm
the small group of Kennedy advisers who debated U.S. options during the Cuban Missile Crisis.
excommunication
formal exclusion from church communion, often carrying spiritual and political consequences.
excommunications
formal church actions excluding people from communion and religious authority.
exile
forced removal from one's country or center of power, often used as political punishment.
exiles
people living outside their home country, often because of political danger, defeat or opposition to a regime.
extraterritoriality
legal privilege allowing foreign subjects to be tried under their own country's authority rather than local law.
